<p>Natural hazards like thunderstorms or lightning can cause loss to the economy and lives, especially in major urban centers. A long-term analysis of pre-monsoon thunderstorm rainfall and lightning, as well as thermodynamic indices like Convective Available Potential Energy, George’s K-Index, and Total Totals Index, has been performed over the major urban hubs of India, i.e., Delhi, Hyderabad, Chennai, Bangalore, Mumbai, Pune, Kolkata, and Ahmedabad. For this purpose, the study utilized IMDAA and ERA5 datasets correspondingly for rainfall and thermodynamic indices for the period from 1980 to 2020, and TRMM and WGLC datasets for lightning observations for periods from 1999–2009 (PRE10) to 2010–2020 (POST10) respectively. For most cities, the quadri-decadal trend of pre-monsoon precipitation increased except for Kolkata and Ahmedabad, where a decrease was noticed. However, the trend over Chennai was realized to be significant through the Mann-Kendal test. There is an east–west contrast in the amount of pre-monsoon precipitation between the cities located in the eastern and western parts of the country. The spatial distribution indicates that rainfall has considerably increased in the boundary regions of the cities and the associated non-urban neighborhoods in recent times. This urban boundary contrast is more prominent in the case of Hyderabad, Delhi, and Pune, since rainfall shows an increase of &gt; 25&#xa0;mm in the boundary regions in the recent years. The spatiotemporal analysis of lightning shows an increasing trend in most of the cities, where it is statistically significant over Delhi, Hyderabad, and Kolkata in the POST10 period. For Kolkata, the trend is more profound with a considerable Sen’s slope value (~ 0.04) compared to other cities. Most of the flashes are observed in the boundary regions of the cities rather than their center. The analysis also advocates KI and TTI to play a considerable role in the initiation of pre-monsoon thunderstorms compared to CAPE.</p>